


This Dark World And Wide.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-22
Updated: 2009-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Joe never qualified to be a field agent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Dark World And Wide.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the poem "On His Blindness" by John Milton.

Joe Dawson never planned on a career after the Marines. He'd done two years at Chicago State and when the time came to join up, he joined up. Life after Vietnam hadn't been something he gave much thought. Maybe his shrink was right. He'd expected to die over there, so why bother with plans. Shrink said it was a coping mechanism. Some part of Joe's brain never let him think he'd see twenty-three. It shut out the rage. It let him sleep at night. Worked pretty well, then he'd gotten his discharge papers and broke down in tears.

Now he's thirty-seven and a bookworm in Paris. He'd learned Latin unwillingly in grade school, but it had been his ticket. Bancroft had gotten reamed out over recruiting a guy without legs, but stuck by him long enough to see him through the Watcher Academy and his first assignment. It was a good assignment, for a historian. He'd clawed his way up the ranks, ignoring the pitying looks and condescending glances, and finally decided to specialize in the only area that would give him eternal job security.

Ancient, elusive, semi-mythical Immortals.

He'd flipped a coin with the regional coordinator and gotten the Gilgamesh Chronicle. That was a couple years ago. He'd made some good headway. Most of the legends had to be picked through. Most of the source texts were corrupted. There was a bit about a dragon that Joe was certain someone had stuck in there as a joke. He was cleaning it up. He was working with Incomplete Records to track no-first-deaths. It wasn't anything like slogging through mud and watching his best friend die. It wasn't anything like being shot at. It was boring and safe and Joe slept very well at night. He thought he might even see fifty.

It wasn't perfect, but Joe had never held out hope for perfect. He'd gotten out of a war zone alive; he figured he'd used up his life's allotment of luck with that one. Now he was living in a world where there were guys who lived forever and whacked each other's heads off with swords. He was in Paris and getting paid to sit and read. This was as far away from the jungle as it got.

Gilgamesh calmed him down and kept his mind off his own problems. The routine of checking, cross-checking, referencing, and cross-referencing kept him steady, anchored him in this time and place. He'd had some flashbacks at the Academy, a couple of them pretty bad. The Watchers had given him a shrink and ordered him to see him. Joe'd liked that. He'd liked getting ordered to fix this problem he had, like it was a real problem with a tangible solution, like needing to refile all the paperwork from the last four years. He'd thought it was funny as hell. Shrink had talked to him some. Maybe it had worked. He didn't have the worst nightmares anymore. It had been ten years since he'd hit the ground when he'd heard a car backfire.

Life was good, really. Most days, it was him and Gilgamesh. That was how Joe liked it. Gilgamesh didn't wonder if he was ever going to get married. Gilgamesh didn't wonder what it would be like to go home to someone someday. Gilgamesh had his sword and his beard and those were good enough for him. Joe followed Chicago politics, never ate at ex-pat restaurants, and called his parents on Sundays. The only time he'd been in a church in years was when he'd looked over some carvings on holy ground, and he was more familiar with the Sumerian gods by this point in his life, but he didn't feel the need to tell his parents that. What they didn't know couldn't hurt them. He'd given his sister a copy of the epic of Gilgamesh for her birthday and warned her not to marry a Watcher. It was crap hours, she'd never see him, and she'd always come second. She knew a good warning when she heard one. She was living in Philadelphia, teaching grade school English. Three kids. Joe wrote them postcards in French and sent them little statues of the Eiffel Tower. It was enough. It was enough to be Uncle Joe and be content.

The Watchers hadn't promised him a rose garden, either.

Some whiz kid out of London had written a dissertation on Methos and was relocating to Paris to be closer to the motherload that was the Western Europe Bureau library. The head of research dropped by on his first day, gave a short speech about inter-project cooperation and sharing resources, and then adjourned them to mingle and introduce themselves.

"Adam Pierson," said the whiz kid. "And you're Joe Dawson. I'm a big fan of your work."

Joe wasn't old enough to have groupies, but he'd take what compliments he could get from a guy who, he was sure, was about to stage a hostile take-over of all the good desks in the common room. Make allies early and maybe he could get this kid to steal Romain's cubbyhole instead. But it probably wasn't worth the effort.

"Thanks," Joe said. "I've never heard of you."

The kid laughed. "No reason you should have." He stuck out his hand and Joe grabbed it and shook it on reflex. The kid had a good grip. "But I'm the Methos project now. And you're Gilgamesh. We should have drinks, compare the worst lies we've had to try to substantiate."

"Yeah, sure," Joe said with no intention of ever doing that. "Sometime."

His no intention of giving this kid more than the time of day lasted about a week. By then, Adam had claimed his territory along the northern wall of the common room, shoved together three tables to hold all his research notes, and began holding court there on Friday afternoons. In a month, he had every historian in Paris eating out of his hand. In two, he'd heard enough gossip and research chatter to write everyone else's chronicle for them.

It took Joe all of five minutes to realize that if he couldn't beat him, it was time to join him. And he wasn't fighting this kid. Methos was probably a myth, cobbled together from the legends of at least twelve different Immortals over a millennium and a half. Adam was in for a world of disappointment when he could conclusively prove that and dash the hopes of every wannabe Methos finder.

But Adam was surprisingly cheerful about that. "Of course I am," he said when Joe cornered him and asked him. "I didn't start this thinking I could find Methos. Don dared me to prove Methos didn't exist."

"So that's what you're here proving?" Joe was surprised to realize that he was disappointed. He'd pinned so much hope on the idea that Adam was an idealist. But if he was just another cynic, another historian who never got rid of that chip on his shoulder over not being a field agent, then Joe didn't have time for him. He'd met enough bitter desk-jockeys. If Adam didn't care for Immortals as living history, then he wasn't worth the paper his notes were printed on.

"I've thrown three years of my life into this," Adam replied. "This stopped being a point of pride a long time ago."

Oh, youth, where three years was a long time. "So what the hell are you doing?"

Adam shrugged. "It's a challenge. Right now, the why of the Methos myth is more fascinating than the what. We can learn a lot by studying its propagation and mutation. It's the most popular Immortal myth, but why? Methos the Legend has never done anything but stay alive."

"I wouldn't call that nothing," Joe said.

It led to an hours-long conversation. Joe gave up staying out of Adam's way after that. And Adam never asked him to sign his second treatise on Gilgamesh through the ages, so Joe forgave him for acting like a groupie.

"I never liked Gilgamesh," Adam said one late Friday afternoon. The sun had half-way set and most of the Watchers had cleared out. Joe was scribbling some notes to himself in shorthand. Adam was leaning over his shoulder.

"Did he slip you decaf once?" Joe asked irritably and shooed Adam back. He hated people in his blind spot. "I'm sure he's very sorry."

Adam was smiling like Joe was a very cute toddler who had just said something profound and didn't understand a word of it. Joe was used to that expression. Adam was irrepressibly smug.

"No, he just liked to walk out and leave you with the check." Adam traced the binding on a 16th-century manuscript. "In a manner of speaking."

"Uh huh." Joe wrote another note to himself, then checked over that he'd covered everything he'd needed to before the weekend. "Guess they didn't invent going Dutch in his lifetime."

"It was one of the many failings of the age," Adam said seriously. Then he clapped Joe on the shoulder. "Come on. I'm buying."

"I don't drink, Adam." It was a much-repeated refrain. And not entirely true. Joe drank, but not with people he worked with. It had started as a promise to his mom; it had ended up saving his career a couple of times. He wasn't about to start now.

"I know," Adam said. "That's why I'm buying."

Cheeky bastard. Joe was tempted to order a drink, even if he didn't touch it, just to make Adam open his wallet. Then he shook his head, called himself stupid and petty a couple times. "You're a real gentleman."

"I'd buy you dinner," Adam said, "but that's a second date thing to do, don't you think?"

Adam was finally out of his blind spot, which wasn't as much of a relief as it should have been. "What?"

"It doesn't have to be a date," and damn Adam for keeping that same bland casual tone through all this, "it could just be another chance for you to convince me that Gilgamesh was the greatest Immortal to ever walk the planet. Or it could be a date. That's your choice, Joe."

Joe opened his mouth and closed it. Did that a couple times. "I don't think Gilgamesh was the greatest Immortal," he said finally, inadequately.

Adam's eyes flashed. "So that's a yes?"

"All right." Joe realized he didn't sound very enthusiastic and hoped Adam wasn't insulted. He was a little numb from the shock of it. He said as much, then, "I didn't expect this from you."

Adam looked genuinely baffled. "Why? What's wrong with me?"

"It's not you," Joe said. "You, look at you. You're young and perfect."

That got a real smile out of Adam. "I'm flattered. Honestly, Joe, really. But you don't need to give me compliments to get me to sleep with you."

Oh, Jesus Christ, the British. Weren't they supposed to be repressed? Joe felt vaguely betrayed by the lack of truth in advertising. "Slow down, Casanova. You're getting ahead of yourself."

Adam nodded. "You're right. We should have the date first before we start exchanging compliments and sleeping together."

Joe wondered if Adam had just woken up this morning and decided to confuse the hell out of him. He knew how to deal with Adam the charismatic genius who let his minions get coffee for him. He knew how to deal with Adam the professional who was a shark at budget meetings. He wasn't sure how to deal with an Adam who seemed intent on getting into his pants. "Adam, where the hell did this come from?"

"Well," Adam drew the word out. "Generally speaking, when one person is sexually and romantically interested in another person, I have it on good authority that Person A makes Person B an offer of food or other nourishment. At least, that's what they tell me."

"You are not allowed to reshape this as some kind of caveman throwback," Joe told him. "If you want to date me, Adam, just straight out ask me. Don't play an anything-goes intellectual and offer me dinner, with sex as a fait-accompli. I'm not interested in that kind of crap."

"Fair enough," Adam said. "But don't underestimate the value of that kind of crap. I asked around, you've never dated a Watcher." Adam made that sound like high treason. "You can shout at me if you want for giving you an easy out and a way to laugh it off. Or you can get off your ass and take a risk."

Adam was a fine one to lecture him on risks. This kid went from some prep school to fucking _Oxford_. Joe had seen his record. What Adam was doing wasting his youth on chasing ghosts was the greatest mystery of Joe's life. This kid made no damn sense to anyone. But he could read ten dead languages and speak two of them, so no one gave a fuck that Adam made no fucking sense. He should be five years away from the Fortune 500, not here. Never here. Guys like him weren't career linguists, they were just slumming until their real life kicked in. "What the hell made you think I'd be interested?"

Adam shrugged. "The way you look at me. So I took a risk. Should I be conducting a strategic withdrawal instead?"

"Of course I'm interested," Joe said with more force than strictly necessary. "For Christ's sake, Adam."

"You don't look it." How Adam could keep up that amused veneer while arguing with him was one more damn mystery about him. "You look like you'd rather strangle me than fuck me."

"I don't like surprises," Joe turned back to his notes. "Adam, if you're actually serious, ask me some other time. And ask like a normal person," and not like someone too good to be true.

And that was it, for a little while. Adam seemed not to know what a normal person was, or hadn't bothered to look it up. Whichever it was, he snapped right back to his usual Adam-self, and entertained the masses with obscure anecdotes and made Harrison, the lone Gaelic specialist, laugh for days over some pun only they understood.

It was enough to make Joe wonder if Adam was dropped on his head a lot as a child.

But he wasn't fucking anyone. That was the surprising part of it. Adam could have had anyone there; half the Paris field office were blatantly throwing themselves at him. But he wasn't fucking anyone. When Joe asked, and he hated himself for doing it, hated himself for giving in to this, whatever it was, when Joe asked, everyone just assumed Joe's don't-shit-where-you-eat policy had rubbed off on impressionable Adam. That was what everyone called him. Impressionable. The kid was twenty-four. By the time Joe was his age, he was walking with a cane.

Besides, Joe was pretty sure by now that Adam's wide-eyed look was a load of bull. The kid was too good, too fast, too sure of himself. Joe had met con artists with less talent in looking harmless. The kid was a shark. Why the fuck he was wasting his time on the Methos chronicle made less and less sense every day.

But maybe the kid was just a fan of fairy tales. He probably still believed in Santa Claus.

It was a Monday morning when Joe realized he'd never answered Adam's question. He found Adam in the mess hall, stirring coffee with a spoon. "I think the greatest Immortal was Methos," he said.

"Methos?" Adam stared at him. "Why?"

"Because it's easy to be exceptional when you're a myth. There's no burden of living up to your press."

Adam grinned, then offered Joe a little packet of artificial sugar. "Wiser words were never spoken."

"What about you?" Joe took it and put it back in the styrofoam cup with all the others. "Greatest of all time?"

"Oh, I don't know. I'm partial to Byron." Adam sipped his coffee. "He's contributing to mortal culture at a fantastic rate."

"He's not a fighter, though. He's only taken," Joe thought for a minute, "something like ten heads."

"By your argument," Adam pointed out, "Methos hasn't taken any. But I can go out to the store and buy Byron's latest album. That's more than you're going to get out a myth."

At the end of the day, Joe stopped by Adam's court. "Byron's too recent for a guy studying ancient Immortals," Joe said.

"I have two tickets to his next concert," Adam replied. "Want to come?"

Joe had always been more partial to the blues than rock and roll, but he had more fun that Thursday night than he'd ever had at a blues bar. Joe left the next morning, shaken.

When Adam came into the common room on Friday, nothing changed, except he caught and kept Joe's eye for longer and longer as the day went on. And when everyone left, Joe and Adam left together.

Adam was still a mystery, but he was quickly becoming _Joe's_ mystery.

He organized the affair in his mind as a collection of memories. Adam's fingertips drifting over Joe's collection of nesting dolls and tipping the smallest one over. Adam, standing barefoot in his bathroom, shaving with a straight razor. Adam's identification badge, lying on the floor next to Joe's. Adam's shirt undone, the cuffs gaping as he raised his hands to cup Joe's face. "I have been waiting to do this," he whispered before he kissed him.

Joe tried to keep it separate from the day-to-day business of collating legends, but he was slipping. He knew was slipping. He would stare at a newly-excavated illuminated manuscript and his vision would blur until all he could see were Adam's fingers from across the room, and Adam would raise his head, somehow always knowing when Joe was looking, and grin at him. Adam grinned like a twenty-something, trying too hard to be provocative about it. It would have been endearing if it wasn't so insulting that Adam assumed Joe didn't already know.

He did, really. He knew. He'd figured it out the moment Adam had woken up next to him, the fourth time they slept together. With sunlight coming in through the blinds, throwing shadows across Adam's cheekbones and casting his face in a strange light, Joe had known. It hadn't been shocking, in retrospect, even when he'd dug out the sketch from an old manuscript. Somehow, Joe had been expecting this since the day they met. Adam was at least five hundred years old and, no, Joe wasn't shocked at all.

"I know what you are," Joe said one night, after Adam had gotten the whole long story out of him, how a young man had gone to war and come back a Watcher, how he had given his life to his country and owed it in return to an Immortal. "But you know that, don't you?"

"The problem is," Adam said, "you look through me. Everyone else looks around me, they see what they want to see. And since that's what I want them to see, it's never a problem." He traced his fingers down Joe's neck. "But you haven't."

The rest didn't matter. Joe only had one question. "What's your real name?"

Adam gave him a long, lingering look. "Benjamin Adams," he said, and then kissed him.

He was lying, but Joe didn't really care. He hadn't expected the truth.


End file.
